New NRA president calls Civil War a "war of northern aggression"

In case you missed the news—and I can’t really blame you for tuning it out—the National Rifle Association has gotten itself a new president. He’s a charming tub of a man by the name of Jim Porter, and Monday was officially his first day in his new job. But even before taking over at the N.R.A.’s headquarters, in Fairfax, Virginia, Porter clearly signalled his intentions.

Addressing the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Houston over the weekend, the sixty-four year-old Porter told the assembled firearms enthusiasts, survivalists, and Republican hangers-on that they were engaged in a “culture war” with the President, media élitists, Mayor Bloomberg, and anyone else who questioned the right of God-fearing Americans to arm themselves like members of an infantry battalion without a proper system of background checks on purchases. “This is not a battle about gun rights,” Porter declared at a breakfast meeting. “[You] here in this room are fighters for freedom. We are the protectors.”

Evidently, Porter intends to be more confrontational than his predecessor, David Keene, a soft-spoken veteran of the conservative movement, and perhaps outdo Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s executive vice-president and principal spokesman, who spearheaded the organization’s successful fight against President Obama’s gun-control proposals. In his main speech to the convention, on Saturday, Porter accused Obama, whom he’s previously labelled a “fake President,” of “meeting and plotting with the Who’s Who of the gun-ban movement, scheming to create a gun-ban bureaucracy.” And he went on:

President Barack Obama is AWOL on virtually every critical threat facing this country. He’s AWOL on border security, he’s AWOL on the deficit, he’s AWOL on national defense, he’s AWOL on terrorism. But there’s one issue where Obama is not AWOL—that’s on gun control. But there’s one thing Obama will never understand—you, me, our friends, neighbors, coworkers, colleagues, family, and the larger family of patriots who know that the Second Amendment, the freedom of our Republic, trumps the Chicago political machine and its gun-ban agenda every time. Even by the standards of an organization that counts Ted Nugent and Glenn Beck among its prominent supporters, Porter is a bit of a ham. Last June, addressing the Wallkill Rod and Gun Club, just up the Hudson from Manhattan, he reminded his audience that the N.R.A. was created in New York State, in 1871, by “some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the ‘war of northern aggression.’ Now, y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the ‘war of northern aggression’ down South.”

As you will have surmised, Porter hails from below the Mason-Dixon line: Birmingham, Alabama, to be precise, where he worked for a local firm of attorneys who specialize in, among other things, defending gun manufacturers against lawsuits. His father, Irvine, led the N.R.A. from 1959 to 1961, when it was principally focussed on organizing and educating hunters and target shooters, and largely kept out of national politics. (In 1968, the N.R.A. supported a gun-control act that introduced a licensing system for dealers.) But Porter, in keeping with the transformation that has overtaken the N.R.A. in the past thirty-five years, portrays the organization’s role in much broader and more paranoid terms. “I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it,” he said in Wallkill. “Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it.”

If there was ever any suggestion that the massacres in Aurora and Newtown would tilt the N.R.A. in a more moderate direction, the elevation of Porter has quashed it.

(More at link):

by Anonymous

reply 27

05/10/2013

Jim Porter is a raging Alabama fat ass and bastard which means he will be perfect for this job.

by Anonymous

reply 1

05/08/2013

Maybe somebody will shoot him

by Anonymous

reply 2

05/08/2013

The Civil War was started by treasonous hicks who deservedly saw their cities burn. Fuck anyone who tries to glamorize the Civil War.

by Anonymous

reply 3

05/08/2013

I guess none of you ever lived in the south. There, that's what they STILL call it.

by Anonymous

reply 4

05/08/2013

Wouldn't want to live in the slave states, R4.

by Anonymous

reply 5

05/08/2013

Ignorant southerners have been calling it the "war of northern aggression" for over a century.

They had best remember what happened to them the first time they started shit.

by Anonymous

reply 6

05/08/2013

Dearest Poli Sci Prof,

I've lived in the south and I've heard people refer to the Civil War as a "war of northern aggression." That doesn't make it fucking right and shame on you if you're willing to overlook such ignorance.

Do you teach at a third-tier community college?

by Anonymous

reply 7

05/08/2013

"war of northern aggression"

if you've ever spent ANY time in the south around white people they ALWAYS refer to the civil war is the "war of northern aggression " or "the war between the states"

by Anonymous

reply 8

05/08/2013

R7? I didn't say I approved of it, and certainly my students never would have used that term in my classroom, but I have heard it used.

Jump to conclusions much?

by Anonymous

reply 9

05/08/2013

It was not A war of Northern Aggression it was THE war of northern aggression

by Anonymous

reply 10

05/08/2013

Any bets that there is a white robe and a hood in his closet?

I wonder how he feels about Gay folks?

by Anonymous

reply 11

05/08/2013

If this tool thinks the most patriotic thing is to give citizens the means to resist a tyrannical government in control powerful mechanized uniformed military, why isn't he the president of IED Makers' Association? When is the last time conventional small arms won a war against the United States? I hate these anti-government fuckwits.

Just because people want to own a firearm doesn't mean they subscribe to this divisive horseshit. A Civil War reference? Just how old and irrelevant is he trying to be? My great great Grandfather was too young to be involved in that.

by Anonymous

reply 12

05/08/2013

These people really need to be shipped back to 1862 where they belong. The unserious, selfish, clueless electorate continues to allow these panderers for bigotry and violence assume a much greater influence than most maniacs are allowed in a civilized society.

by Anonymous

reply 13

05/08/2013

"war of northern aggression" = Klanspeak

by Anonymous

reply 14

05/08/2013

The north didn't get aggressive until AFTER the south fired on Fort Sumter. Calling it the war of Northern Aggression is like Germany calling WW2 the war or Polish Aggression.

by Anonymous

reply 15

05/08/2013

The Confederacy was a bunch of amoral/immoral traitorous losers.

Then and now.

by Anonymous

reply 16

05/08/2013

Porter is obviously a traitor to the United States and a criminal, as is anyone who advocates the violent overthrow of the United States government.

The Founders put laws against treason and against taking up arms against the government into the Constitution for a reason.

It's worth noting that in addition to this fuckwitted fool Porter, the NRA hootenanny was packed to the rafters with the same shitstains who spoke at CPAC. They are Republicans, every goddamned one of them.

by Anonymous

reply 17

05/08/2013

Republicans are the whiniest bitches around. They think they are all macho but they should just whack off their little dicks and put in a pussy. Losers all of them.

You lost bitches because you were stupid and cowards and didn't want to give up the slaves who did all the work for your lazy asses. Sherman should have visited more cities.

by Anonymous

reply 18

05/08/2013

unreal

by Anonymous

reply 19

05/09/2013

You are aware this is from a satire site, right? None of this happened.

by Anonymous

reply 20

05/09/2013

Um, yeah it did happen, R20. Watch this redneck idiot in action at the NRA convention from a few days ago. Youtube also has the video of him talking about the "War of Northern Aggression."

by Anonymous

reply 21

05/09/2013

I am from the South, I still live here, majored in History at Vanderbilt, and no one I know or ever met calls the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression. It is maybe used ironically to make fun of our DAC grandmothers. I'm 46. My nephews and nieces wouldn't know what you are talking about if you called it anything but the Civil War.

by Anonymous

reply 22

05/09/2013

Seriously, I'm Canadian and even I have heard that term.

by Anonymous

reply 23

05/09/2013

freewood.com had the satire post that started the internet sensation. they've removed the post (understandably) but still have this listed on their sidebar:

FREE WOOD POST ON TWITTER

“Stop Blaming Hitler!” Says Neo-Nazi Group fb.me/2MsTEAAzM 9 hours ago Mark Sanford Looking Forward To More Taxpayer Funded Affairs fb.me/22C5CgNa2 13 hours ago NRA President Jim Porter: “It’s Only A Matter Of Time Before We Can Own Colored People Again” fb.me/2WoMz12xn 2 days ago

by Anonymous

reply 24

05/09/2013

I'm soooooo tired of crazy right wingers having a platform in the mainstream media. GO AWAY!!!!

by Anonymous

reply 25

05/09/2013

America is a nation of Guns and God.

It is going to take a long time to change this.

by Anonymous

reply 26

05/09/2013

R23, I didn't say I hadn't heard it or that it didn't exist. I did say in 46 years I've only heard it used IRONICALLY.

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